Podcast
Sunday Service at Ananda Village
Hosted by Ananda · EN
Live Broadcast of Sunday Service
Every Sunday, 11:00 am Pacific time • 18:00 GMT • 23:30 IST
Schedule and Lyrics
11:00 am Sunday Service
Click on this link to view a description of each part of the service, including song lyrics (in PDF format).
Past Sunday Services
43episodes
Episodes
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Worshiping in Spirit and Truth
May 25, 202500:29:11Tap to summarizeWatch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Nayaswami Ananta, recorded at Ananda Village on May 25th 2025. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is The Best Way to Worship Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within. The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. In Chapter 4 of the Gospel of St. John, the woman of Samaria asks Jesus, Where is the best place to worship? This question might be expanded to include: What is the best church? What is the best religion? Is it important to go on pilgrimage to holy shrines? What is the best ritual? What is the best mantra or prayer? Jesus cut across all such questioning with his reply: The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. It was not that outer considerations of place, church, ritual, etc., are irrelevant. Each person should find those practices and observances which are compatible with his own nature – one might say, with his own vibrations. Not everyone’s natural path is the same. God sent different religions into the world to satisfy different human needs. The overarching concern, however, considering that the goal is to find God, is to include in one’s worship daily, inner communion with the Lord. God is Silence: He must be sought, therefore, in inner silence. God is Absolute Love: He must be sought, therefore, in the silence of love. God is Spirit, and thus immaterial: He must be sought, above all, in the expanding peace of deep meditation. Thus, the Bhagavad Gita states in the sixth Chapter: Sequestered should he sit, Steadfastly meditating, solitary, His thoughts controlled, his passions laid away, From every craving for possession freed. Wherever you are, whatever your outward beliefs and observances, seek God in the silence of your own soul. Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.
Transcribe →Dissolving the Ego through Service and Meditation
May 18, 2025Tap to summarizeWatch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Nayaswami Jyotish, recorded at Ananda Village on May 18th 2025. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is Activity vs. Inner Communion Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within. The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. Last week we contemplated the well-known story of Martha and Mary. Traditionally, this story has been offered to show the two classic approaches to salvation: the first, through action, and the second, through prayer. The excuse of the Marthas of this world has always been, “The church needs its Marthas, too.” Treatises, moreover, have been written to justify the Martha approach to piety, praising her self-sacrifice as, perhaps, an even higher demonstration of devotion. (Thus do the unmeditative workers in religion try to justify themselves!) Yet the fact remains that Jesus rebuked Martha. Elsewhere, moreover, he spoke of the virtue of feeding the hungry, curing the sick, and housing those who were homeless. It wasn’t that he disapproved of serving people. Wrong attitude was the object of his criticism. What he was criticizing was forgetfulness of the true goal of right, spiritual action. Good deeds, outwardly, without inner communion with God, will result in good karma but will not bring final freedom from all karma. The Path to inner freedom was described by Paramhansa Yogananda in these words: “Be always calmly active, and actively calm.” As it says in the Bhagavad Gita, the second Chapter: He who is not shaken by anxiety during times of sorrow, nor elated during times of happiness; who is free from egoic desires and their attendant fear and anger: Such an one is of steady discrimination. Do your duty in life – so counsels this great Scripture elsewhere – but never lose sight of Him to whom all action should be dedicated. Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.
Transcribe →Krishna's Teachings on Cosmic Consciousness
Feb 23, 2025Tap to summarizeWatch this inspiring Sunday Service talk with Nayaswami Jyotish, recorded at Ananda Village on February 23rd, 2025. The reading for this week from Swami Kriyananda's book Rays of the One Light is Can Man See God? Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within. The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. There is a saying in Chapter 1 of the Gospel of St. John that would seem to respond with a definite No to the question, Can man see God? The saying is: No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. Many great saints, however, claim to have seen God. If we ask, then, “Can God be seen?” rather than, “Can man see God?” the answer is, “Yes! Else those saints lied; and, else, the Scriptures themselves lie.” The point is, it is not man – this human body, these human eyes – that sees God. God can be seen only with spiritual vision – with the eye of the soul. As the Bhagavad Gita puts it in the eleventh Chapter: “Thou canst not see Me with mortal eyes. Therefore I now give thee sight divine. Behold My supreme power of Yoga!” With these words Hari, the exalted Lord of Yoga, revealed himself to Arjuna in His infinite form. Paramhansa Yogananda, in Autobiography of a Yogi, describes the supernal experience in words more readily comprehensible to modern minds than the poetic phraseology of the Bhagavad Gita. The chapter “An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness” is one of the most inspiringly beautiful in all mystical literature. Here is a brief excerpt: An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light. [I saw] the divine dispersion of rays pour from an Eternal Source, blazing into galaxies, transfigured with ineffable auras. Again and again I saw the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame. By rhythmic reversion, sextillion worlds passed into diaphanous luster; fire became firmament. I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart. Irradiating splendor issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure.…The creative voice of God I heard resounding as Aum, the vibration of the Cosmic Motor.” This, so the great masters aver, is what God is. And this also, they insist, is what we are in our deepest reality. Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.
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